Patients may present problems after coronary artery bypass surgery and nurses play an important role in the detection of such problems. With the purpose to determine the problems of 25 patients during the first month after hospital discharge, they were followed up via telephone as well as when they returned to hospital. Content analyses of detailed nurses' recording revealed eight categories of problems. The most frequently related problems were related to the surgical incision site (76%), pharmacological therapy (28%), other pathologies (24%), mood alterations (20%) and sleep pattern disturbances (16%). The strategy chosen showed to be efficient to analyze the recovery of these patients during the first month after hospital discharge.
coronary artery bypass surgery; recovery
